Weight loss. Muscle gain. Read more. Drink more water. Skip that second cup of coffee. Less alcohol. More vegetables. Less scrolling. Less Netflix. Wake up earlier.
Any of these things make it on your list last month?
I know goals. I love goals. As someone who lived my life with an eating disorder for over a decade, goal setting became the cornerstone of my recovery. If I could focus on a goal, I could take small steps toward it. Goal one: breakfast. Goal two: drum circle (yes…drum circle…don’t knock it till you try it) Goal three: snack. Goal four: therapy. And so on, and so forth. Overcoming each of these obstacles with a support team helped me to understand that I could set and meet any goal I put my mind to.
After I left the hospital, setting and meeting goals became how I got through life in a healthy way. It still is. The goals have shifted, but the principles are the same: take tiny steps forward and you can get through anything. Write until you’re in HuffPo. Paint until your pictures are in Starbucks. Run until you’re an athlete. Those things all started with baby steps for me since my recovery.
Without lofty goals, I struggle to exist. Maybe this is some kind of character flaw, but I think we were all created in different ways and I believe this is how God made me. I don’t believe all this stuff that motivational people like David Goggins say about everyone needing to go it alone and suck it all up and knock yourself upside the head and “Get over it.” That worked for him because of who he is and it was (and is) a survival strategy for him. It’s a survival strategy for me, too. It looks really good to the outside world — but really, that’s all it is. Coping.
So, how do you cope? Maybe it’s food. Maybe it’s laziness. Maybe it’s too much coffee, not enough sleep, or drinking lots of alcohol. Maybe it’s numbing out with screens when you don’t want to feel. All of these things are important to examine. But, in order to come into any real change – real, honest-to-goodness change – you need to first understand why you’re doing too much of these things. You need to come up with replacement behaviors and coping strategies instead of just cutting things out for the simple reason that you want to be healthier. There is always more going on under the surface.
Obviously, my eating disorder was harming me. It was destructive and ultimately had the potential to kill me. “I want to be healthier” wasn’t my motivator. My motivator was wanting to understand myself and why I couldn’t get out of my cycle and become equipped with ways out when life felt unbearable.
So, maybe when you’re reaching for the Costco-sized chocolate almonds in the cupboard, or that glass of wine when you’re feeling overwhelmed, take a minute and breathe. Feel the weird feelings that you’re feeling. Try a new choice like doodling for five minutes or petting your cat. See what that does for you. And see if it’s something you’d like to try again. And again. And again.
Making surface goals simply on the basis of “It’s good for me, so I should do it” will never get your goals to stick. Think of what a given goal says about you – about who you are at your core, about who you want to be: someone with character, honor, and personal accountability – now there’s someone who’s making healthy choices. If you shift your attitude about yourself from someone who’s trying to get a little self-control to someone who possesses discernment and character and wants to exhibit that even when no one’s watching, well then you’ve got a force right there that’s deeper – a real drive to be the healthier person you know is inside of you.
Make resolutions not about what you want to be doing or not doing, but rather: what your values are and how you’re living them out.
I am still coming up short – we all come up short. That’s what it is to be human. We make mistakes. We fail. We act like giant turds. But then we wake up the next morning, look at ourselves in the mirror, and remind ourselves who we are.
